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Developmental Behavioral Genetics

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Handbook of Developmental Psychopathology

Abstract

Progress in understanding genetic influences on health and development continues to be swift and substantial, both resolving and raising core questions for clinical and developmental science. That general point would have been predicted from the last edition of this Handbook. What might not have been obvious at the time of the previous volume is the degree of methodological migration away from traditional behavioral genetic approaches using of sibling, twin, and adoption designs to molecular, genetic, and particularly epigenetic approaches; indeed, molecular and epigenetic approaches have since become the more attention-getting, if not the more dominant, methods for testing genetic hypotheses. As a result, the understanding and tracking the field of developmental behavioral genetics now requires a good deal of appreciation for technical laboratory procedures as well as the quantitative sophistication and grounding in behavioral science. Alongside this shift in methods has been a concomitant shift in research questions; that is a theme of this chapter. After a brief review of some of the basic concepts in behavioral genetics, this chapter seeks to present a current overview of the field of developmental behavioral genetics that attends to the changing methods and questions that drive the field. The latter section of the chapter considers the new ideas and applications of developmental behavioral genetic research, particularly to treatment.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychiatry, Wynne Center for Family Research, University of Rochester Medical Center, Rochester, NY, 14642, USA

    Thomas G. O’Connor Ph.D.

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  1. Thomas G. O’Connor Ph.D.
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Correspondence to Thomas G. O’Connor Ph.D. .

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  1. Institute for the Study of Child Development, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA

    Michael Lewis

  2. Department of Psychology, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, Illinois, USA

    Karen D. Rudolph

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O’Connor, T.G. (2014). Developmental Behavioral Genetics. In: Lewis, M., Rudolph, K. (eds) Handbook of Developmental Psychopathology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-9608-3_13

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